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Steve Ahlquist has been writing his Mythographical Meanderings over at ForcesofGeek.com for two years now. If you haven’t been reading his column you’re missing out. We’ll be posting excerpts from his best essays with links back to FOB where you can read the rest. This essay was originally published April 28, 2009.

“…several critics agree that Poe only has one endlessly repeated main character- himself. He is pictured as appearing and reappearing as his melancholic, hallucinated, mad and half-mad creations again and again.”

On Sullivan’s Island Edgar Allan Poe made the acquaintance of a naturalist, William Legrand, and his black servant, Jupiter. Edgar joined the pair in a search for Captain Kidd’s treasure that Edgar recorded as a story he titled “The Gold-Bug” first published in 1842. Edgar received his share of the fortune in July 1831, around the time his brother Henry died.

Steve Ahlquist has been writing his Mythographical Meanderings over at ForcesofGeek.com for two years now. If you haven’t been reading his column you’re missing out. We’ll be posting excerpts from his best essays with links back to FOB where you can read the rest. This essay was originally published April 6, 2009.

Life on Mars was a 2006 BBC science fiction/police drama TV series. The story concerns a cop, DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) Sam Tyler (played by John Simm, soon to be returning as The Master on Doctor Who) who, after being hit by a car in 2006, finds himself in the year 1973. There, he works as a DI (Detective Inspector) under DCI Gene Hunt (played by Philip Glenister.) Tyler’s reaction to the racist, sexist 1970’s provide the core of the series in terms of drama and comedy, but the true tension of the show concerns the nature Tyler’s predicament. Is he insane, in a coma, or really a time traveler?

Steve Ahlquist has been writing his Mythographical Meanderings over at ForcesofGeek.com for two years now. If you haven’t been reading his column you’re missing out. We’ll be posting excerpts from his best essays with links back to FOB where you can read the rest. This essay was originally published March 9, 2009.

The presidential election of 1976 is generally considered to have been held, like most recent presidential elections, between two parties, the Republican Party, who presented as their candidate Gerald “Jerry” Ford, and the Democratic Party, who put forward James “Jimmy” Carter. In the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal and Nixon’s resignation, there was much dissatisfaction among the voting public with the major parties, and for the first time, there were serious attempts by third party candidates to achieve the presidency.

Eugene McCarthy ran as an independent. Roger McBride was the Libertarian candidate, and Peter Camejo was running for the Socialist Workers Party. Another key factor was that for the first time since 1960 there were held a series of three televised Presidential Debates, sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Ratings for the first debate were okay, but for the second debate they were much worse. In an attempt to garner ratings, ABC TV executives instructed their producers to extend invitations to candidates from all the minor and trivial parties, with the policy that the first three candidates to respond would be granted a place on the stage. By the time the television executives and the League of Women Voters realized what a mistake they made, it was already too late.

The debate, held on October 22, 1976 was hosted by Barbara Walters, and consisted of five candidates. Here is the unaltered transcript:

Steve Ahlquist has been writing his Mythographical Meanderings over at ForcesofGeek.com for two years now. If you haven’t been reading his column you’re missing out. We’ll be posting excerpts from his best essays with links back to FOB where you can read the rest. This essay was originally published February 23, 2009.

Most people don’t worry about this stuff. I do.

The continuity of a television show like Star Trek is, at first glance, a relatively simple affair. The show aired on the NBC television network starting on Thursday, September 8, 1966 and continued for three years. From a continuity standpoint then, we can simply state that everything happened in the order that we would have seen it had we been watching the show from the beginning.

Unfortunately, we run into problems almost right away. It turns out that the third episode aired was the first episode filmed. (And the first episode was actually the second pilot.) For the episode entitled “Where No Man Has Gone Before” the cast had yet to be solidified. From a viewer’s standpoint, there would odd discrepancies. Doctor McCoy is nowhere to be seen, instead we have Doctor Mark Piper as the ship’s chief medical officer. Uhura is gone. Sulu is an astrophysicist.